1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and a system for conducting a lottery. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method for conducting a recurring lottery that requires winners of the lottery to return part of their winnings to an organizing body of the lottery, wherein the returned winnings are then partially or entirely provided to winners of subsequent lotteries, and a system for conducting the method.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Methods which involve risking something of smaller value for the chance to win something of greater value are common. For example, most states of the U.S. sponsor recurring lotteries that feature a drawing of chance. In these lotteries, each lottery participant typically must pay out a small fee, for example, $1, for the opportunity to win a large cash prize, or “jackpot”, which may be up to multiple millions of dollars in value. To win this jackpot, the participant may be required to, for example, match a subset of numbers of the participant's own selection from a larger pool of numbers to a subset of numbers that are later drawn randomly from the pool by lottery officials. Although winners are required to pay taxes on their winnings, they are not required to pay back any of their after-tax winnings into the lottery. In these lotteries, therefore, cash prizes are funded only by the monies risked by participants (and possibly any interest drawn thereupon), with the value of the cash prize for any particular drawing being at least partially dependent upon the amount of money paid into the lottery by the participants of that particular drawing.
One limitation of existing lotteries is that the jackpot value is relatively low when participation is low. Worse, when participation in a particular lottery is low for long stretches of time, the financial health, and therefore the survival, of the lottery is threatened.
Another limitation of existing lotteries is that they do not guarantee that anyone will win any particular drawing of the lottery. This is problematic because it can deter some potential participants from partaking in the lottery. Also, because jackpots that are not won in these existing lotteries are typically “rolled over” until the next drawing, with the jackpot increasing in value each time a roll over occurs, some potential participants may be inclined to wait until the jackpot is rolled over several times before partaking in the lottery.
An improved lottery method therefore would be one that requires cash prize winners to pay a fraction of their winnings back into the lottery. Such a requirement would enable the lottery to be “self-sustaining”. This is true because a lottery that is at least partially funded by past winners would be less dependent on future participation. An improved lottery method also would be one that guarantees at least one winner each time a drawing is held. What is needed, therefore, is a lottery method that requires winners to return a portion of their winnings back into the lottery and that guarantees at least one winner each time a drawing is held and a system for conducting that method.